Palladyne AI Corp. (PDYN)

Item 2. Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

Throughout this section, unless otherwise noted, the “Company,” “Palladyne AI Corp.,” “Palladyne,” “we,” “us,” and “our” refers to Palladyne AI Corp., and its subsidiaries, collectively. You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with our unaudited interim condensed consolidated financial statements and related notes thereto included elsewhere in this Quarterly Report (this “Report”) as well as our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2025 (the “2025 Form 10-K”) and our other filings, including Current Reports on Form 8-K, that we have filed with the SEC through the date of this Report. As discussed in the Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements below, in addition to historical information, the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth in Part II Item 1A Risk Factors and elsewhere in this Report.

Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain statements in this Report constitute “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the “Securities Act”) and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”). These forward-looking statements relate to expectations for future financial performance, business strategies or expectations for our business. Specifically, forward-looking statements may include statements relating to:

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our ability to integrate acquired businesses and achieve the expected benefits of the acquisitions;

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our ability to develop and sell our full-stack, closed-loop autonomy software ("AI/ML Foundational Technology") and related products and the capabilities and functionality of our AI/ML Foundational Technology and related products;

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our ability to successfully provide vertically integrated aerospace engineering design services, enhanced avionics compute hardware and machining and fabrication services;

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our expected timeline for commercial release of our products and receipt of corresponding revenues;

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our ability to manage and overcome supply chain challenges, including increases in the cost of and an interruption in the supply or shortage of materials;

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nature and size of the markets that we are targeting;

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our product roadmaps, including expected timing of new product releases and target markets;

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our ability to respond to rapid technological changes;

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competition from existing or future businesses and technologies and the potential advantages of our products as compared to competitors;

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our ability to manage our growth and expenses;

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our ability to comply with evolving laws and regulations applicable to our business;

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our ability to attract and retain qualified personnel with the necessary experience, including employees who are instrumental to our business strategy;

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our projected financial and operating information and estimates of market size and opportunities;

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our future financial performance;

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our ability to introduce new products that meet our customers’ requirements and to successfully transition to high volume manufacturing of our products by third-party manufacturers or by us;

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our ability to implement contingency plans to further limit operations and reduce costs and/or seek additional financing should revenue not materialize in time or sufficient amount to support our operations;

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the impact of natural disasters, health epidemics and global economic and geopolitical conditions and international conflicts on our business and the business of our customers;

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changes in the markets for our products and services;

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expansion plans and opportunities;

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future capital requirements and sources and uses of cash;

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our ability to defend and the outcome of any litigation or regulatory proceedings;

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our ability to maintain, protect and enhance our intellectual property;

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our ability to maintain and protect our brand; and

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other statements preceded by, followed by or that include the words "may," "can," "should," "will," "estimate," "plan," "project," "forecast," "intend," "expect," "anticipate," "believe," "seek," "aim," "target" or similar expressions.

These forward-looking statements are based on information available as of the date of this Report and our management's current expectations, forecasts and assumptions, and involve a number of judgments, risks and uncertainties. Accordingly, forward-looking statements should not be relied upon as representing our views as of any subsequent date, and, in any event, you should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. We do not undertake any obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date they were made, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as may be required under applicable securities laws.

These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include those factors described in Part II Item 1A Risk Factors of this Report. Should one or more of these risks or uncertainties materialize, or should any of the assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary in material respects from those projected in these forward-looking statements. Our Risk Factors are not guarantees that no such conditions exist as of the date of this Report and should not be interpreted as an affirmative statement that such risks or conditions have not materialized, in whole or in part.

In addition, statements that "we believe" and similar statements reflect our beliefs and opinions on the relevant subject. These statements are based upon information known to us as of the date of this Report, and while we believe such information forms a reasonable basis for such statements, such information may be limited or incomplete, and our statements should not be read to indicate that we have conducted an exhaustive inquiry into, or review of, all potentially available relevant information. These statements are inherently uncertain and investors are cautioned not to unduly rely upon these statements.

Overview

We are a U.S.-based technology company developing and offering embodied artificial intelligence ("AI") software and collaborative autonomy solutions, advanced avionics, unmanned aerial vehicles ("UAVs"), advanced UAV engineering services and precision-manufactured components for aerospace, defense and commercial/industrial markets. Our core AI software offerings, Palladyne IQ and SwarmOS/Palladyne Pilot, consist of full-stack, closed-loop autonomy software that is intended to enhance the functionality and operational effectiveness of third-party robotic systems across a range of applications and our proprietary UAVs. These products are designed to be hardware agnostic, enabling integration across a wide range of robotic platforms, whether third-party or our own proprietary platforms, including industrial robots, collaborative robots ("cobots"), UAVs, unmanned ground vehicles ("UGVs"), and remotely operated vehicles ("ROVs") across multiple domains.

We have modeled our embodied AI architecture after nature to enable machines to filter out irrelevant data, interpret relevant data, quickly make decisions in real time and act in the real world, all at the edge and without centralized decision-making. We refer to this architectural class as Decentralized Embodied Collaborative Autonomy ("DECA"). DECA describes biologically inspired autonomy in which physically embodied agents perceive, decide and act locally while collaborating through decentralized interaction rather than centralized control. AI is the enabling mechanism, but autonomy and execution occur entirely at the edge. Intelligence that must act in the physical world operates under fundamentally different constraints. Machines that move, coordinate and make decisions in real time cannot rely solely on centralized reasoning, constant connectivity or energy intensive computation. They must operate locally, respond in milliseconds, collaborate with other machines and do so within tight limits on power, size and cost. Our AI technology is being built to act, not only think. It is edge-native and decentralized by necessity. It is designed for systems in which each machine operates autonomously while collaborating locally with others, without reliance on continuous centralized control or excessive compute. We have already implemented early versions of a DECA architecture through our Palladyne IQ and SwarmOS platforms, proving the approach in real systems today while remaining at the early edge of a much larger and inevitable opportunity: becoming the intelligence layer for autonomous machines operating beyond the reach of the cloud.

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We are positioning our defense business as a mid-tier U.S. technology prime defense contractor aiming to combine innovative autonomy, practical engineering and American production to bring intelligent systems into active service faster, safer and more cost-effectively than legacy approaches. We seek to harness our advanced, ethical embodied AI to provide cost-effective lethality and precision harm mitigation through rapidly delivering scalable, low-cost, intelligent and collaborative attritable weapons, including by developing proprietary, UAVs incorporating our avionics and AI technologies. We support these efforts and those of other defense contractors and commercial customers through our vertically integrated aerospace engineering design services, enhanced avionics compute hardware and machining and fabrication services. Palladyne SwarmOS is designed for unmanned platforms and includes advanced autonomy and coordination capabilities that enable multiple UAVs to swarm, collaborate and execute complex missions through distributed tasking and edge-native orchestration. Our embodied AI is designed to operate in complex, contested and high-risk environments, enabling distributed tasking, human-on-the-loop oversight, degraded-communications resilience, multi-domain coordination and real-time responsiveness. Our platform-agnostic autonomy stack combines real-time sensor fusion, adaptive AI models, and edge-native orchestration to support autonomous and collaborative systems across air, ground, maritime and industrial domains where performance, resilience, trust and mission assurance are critical to operational outcomes. These capabilities are intended to meet the performance and reliability requirements of military and defense customers, particularly in applications where it is essential to conduct coordinated multi-vehicle operations in contested environments with degraded communications.

For commercial and industrial customers in particular, Palladyne IQ is designed to enable poly-functional robots, including industrial robots and cobots, to become capable of performing multiple tasks across dynamic real-world industrial environments. Palladyne IQ enables industrial robots and cobots to adapt to variability in tasks, parts, and environments, thereby reducing the need for rigid automation, custom fixtures, and manual intervention. We believe Palladyne IQ has applications across manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and other industrial settings where unstructured or semi-structured environments have historically limited the adoption of automation. We also offer Palladyne Pilot, a derivative version of SwarmOS

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Item 7. Management's Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.

You should read the following discussion and analysis of our financial condition and results of operations in conjunction with our consolidated financial statements and related notes thereto included elsewhere in this Annual Report. In addition to historical information, the following discussion and analysis contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. Our actual results may differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements as a result of certain factors, including those set forth in Part I Item 1A Risk Factors and elsewhere in this Annual Report. See also Part I Special Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements in this Annual Report.

Overview

We are a U.S.-based technology company developing and offering embodied AI software and collaborative autonomy solutions, advanced avionics, UAVs, advanced UAV engineering services and precision-manufactured components for defense and commercial/industrial markets. Our core AI software offerings, Palladyne IQ, SwarmOS and Palladyne Pilot, consist of full-stack, closed-loop autonomy software that is intended to enhance the functionality and operational effectiveness of third-party robotic systems across a range of applications. These products are designed to be hardware agnostic, enabling integration across a wide range of robotic platforms, whether third-party or our own proprietary platforms, including industrial robots, cobots, UAVs, UGVs, and ROVs across multiple domains.

We are positioning our defense business as a mid-tier U.S. technology prime defense contractor aiming to combine innovative autonomy, practical engineering and American production to bring intelligent systems into active service faster, safer and more cost-effectively than legacy approaches. We seek to harness our advanced, ethical embodied AI to provide cost-effective lethality and precision harm mitigation through rapidly delivering scalable, low-cost, intelligent and collaborative attritable weapons, including by developing proprietary, UAVs incorporating our avionics and AI technologies. We support these efforts and those of other defense contractors and commercial customers through our vertically integrated aircraft engineering design services, enhanced avionics compute hardware and machining and fabrication services. Palladyne SwarmOS is designed for unmanned platforms and includes advanced autonomy and coordination capabilities that enable multiple UAVs to swarm, collaborate and execute complex missions through distributed tasking and edge-native orchestration. Our embodied AI is designed to operate in complex, contested and high-risk environments, enabling distributed tasking, human-on-the-loop oversight, degraded-communications resilience, multi-domain coordination and real-time responsiveness. Our platform-agnostic autonomy stack combines real-time sensor fusion, adaptive AI models, and edge-native orchestration to support autonomous and collaborative systems across air, ground, maritime and industrial domains where performance, resilience, trust and mission assurance are critical to operational outcomes. These capabilities are intended to meet the performance and reliability requirements of military and defense customers, particularly in applications where it is essential to conduct coordinated multi-vehicle operations in contested environments with degraded communications.

For commercial and industrial customers in particular, Palladyne IQ is designed to enable poly-functional robots, including industrial robots and cobots, to become capable of performing multiple tasks across dynamic real-world industrial environments. Palladyne IQ enables industrial robots and cobots to adapt to variability in tasks, parts, and environments, thereby reducing the need for rigid automation, custom fixtures, and manual intervention. We believe Palladyne IQ has applications across manufacturing, logistics, warehousing, and other industrial settings where unstructured or semi-structured environments have historically limited the adoption of automation. We also offer Palladyne Pilot, a derivative version of SwarmOS tailored to meet the requirements of public safety and commercial customers by delivering core autonomy capabilities with reduced system complexity and cost. Please see Part I Item 1A Risk Factors for a discussion of the risks related to these activities, in particular those discussed under "Risks Related to our Business".

Key Factors Affecting Operating Results

We believe that our performance and future success depend on several factors that present significant opportunities for us but also pose risks and challenges, including those discussed below and in Part I Item 1A Risk Factors of this Annual Report on Form 10-K.

Development, Testing and Commercial Launch of our AI/ML Software, Avionics, and UAV Products

We expect to continue commercialization efforts, internal testing and customer trials for our products throughout 2026. Whether we are successful in these efforts depends on many factors, including those discussed under Part II Item 1A Risk Factors. Such risks may result in delay in achieving product revenues, which would adversely affect our financial condition and operating results.

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Financing of Operations

We intend to use our cash on hand to continue to enhance our products, conduct product development activities, pursue marketing and sales opportunities and fund operations as we seek to further commercialize and enhance and achieve revenue from our products and services. The amount and timing of our future funding requirements will depend on many factors, including the pace and results of our product commercialization and enhancement efforts, our ability to sell our products and services and thereby recognize associated revenue, capital and human capital requirements to develop and sell products and provide services prior to receiving payments sufficient to cover our costs and our ability to lower costs as volumes increase.

We have taken and continue to take numerous steps to manage our use of cash. For example, in 2023 we suspended our legacy hardware product development efforts and focused our product development efforts on our AI/ML Foundational Technology and related products, and terminated our operations in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in early 2024. During the fourth quarter of 2024 and fiscal year 2025 we raised approximately $68.9 million in gross proceeds from the sale of our Common Stock and warrants. For further information on our financing activities, see "Liquidity and Capital Resources."

We believe we have sufficient liquidity to operate for at least the next 12 months without the need to raise additional capital. However, we may decide to seek additional financing during that time to bolster our cash reserves and increase our ability to continue to pursue our business objectives. As a result, we intend to continue monitoring our liquidity, financial and business results and outlook and market conditions, and may be opportunistic and raise capital when we consider market conditions are good or a favorable opportunity exists. Any delays in the sales of our products and services will negatively impact our ability to generate revenue, our profitability, our cash flows, our overall operating performance and our ability to continue operations and may result in the need to raise additional capital. We will continue to carefully evaluate our use of cash and liquidity.

Strategic Acquisitions

On November 14, 2025, we acquired GuideTech, LLC an engineering company, MKR Fabrication, LLC (also known as MKR Fabricators), a fabrication company, and Warnke Precision Machining, LLC (also known as Warnke Precision Machining), a precision machining company. Our results presented and discussed below include the operating activity for these acquired companies from the acquisition date through December 31, 2025. Our results for periods prior to the acquisition date do not include the financial information of these acquired companies.

Customer Demand

Although demand for AI/ML software products has grown in recent years, the market continues to evolve. The market demand for our software is unproven, and important assumptions about the characteristics of targeted markets, pricing and sales cycles may be inaccurate. Based on interaction with dozens of potential customers, we believe that the sales cycle for Palladyne IQ is likely to be between 12 and 18 months, or even longer, while the sales cycle for Palladyne Pilot is unknown. While we believe that our products will provide significant benefits and return on investment to customers, as it is a new technology, we are dependent on customers who are willing to adopt, purchase and implement new technologies and products. Further, we have U.S. government revenue-generating contracts related to various aspects of our AI/ML Foundational Technology and our Palladyne IQ and Palladyne Pilot products and we have been affected by government shutdowns. For example, during the U.S. government shutdown in the fourth quarter of 2025, we experienced delays in our interactions with certain government agencies that affected our collection efforts, our ability to consummate new government contracts and our ability to maintain or renew government contracts in a timely manner. The duration of the shutdown could have a compounding effect, and the longer it continues, the more significant the potential adverse impact may be on our anticipated revenues for fiscal years 2025 and 2026. For additional information around the risks associated with our government contracts, see Part I Item 1A Risk Factors "A portion of our revenue is currently and will continue to be generated by contracts with government entities, which makes us subject to a number of uncertainties, challenges and risks." If customer demand does not develop as expected or we do not accurately estimate pricing, adoption rates and sales cycles for our products, our business, results of operations and financial condition will be adversely affected.

Continued Investment and Innovation

We are a pioneer in the robotic systems industry and benefit from lessons learned over 30-plus years and significant investment in research and development. Through our hardware development efforts over many years, including our related AI-software development efforts, we developed a significant amount of advanced technology that we are leveraging to develop our AI/ML

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Foundational Technology and related products. Our recent acquisitions have also brought us additional and new skills and expertise related to the products and services of the acquired companies. We believe our financial performance is dependent on our ability to enhance and update our products. It is important that we continually identify and respond to rapidly evolving customer requirements and competitive threats, develop and introduce innovative products, enhance our products and generate active market demand for and sell our products. If we fail to do this, our market and financial position and revenue may be adversely affected, and our investments in these technologies will not be recovered.

Geopolitical and Macro-economic Environment

Geopolitical and macro-economic factors, such as inflation, changes in United States trade policy, including tariffs, interest rates, oil prices, unemployment rates, international conflicts, such as the current wars between Russia and Ukraine and conflict in the middle east, volatility in the stock market and political or social unrest, can have significant impacts on economic activity, which in turn could affect demand for our products or our ability to cost-effectively develop and sell our products. Among other things, these and similar factors can affect our ability to hire or retain qualified personnel

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